The Evolution of Synth Soundtracks

Features

Jun 25, 2024

The Evolution of Synth Soundtracks

The Evolution of Synth Soundtracks

Features

Jun 25, 2024

It’s hard to imagine the sound of contemporary cinema without the synthesizer. From the resonant “braaaam”—made famous by Hans Zimmer in Inception—that’s now ubiquitous in dramatic action sequences to the remixed pop classics that often accompany trailers to incite the feeling of nostalgia with a modern twist, synths are everywhere in films. And not all electronic instruments announce themselves as such: That violin you’re hearing? It might just be a synthesizer!

The Synth Soundtracks collection now playing on the Criterion Channel highlights a special period—a sweet spot, if you will—in the history of film scoring: the bloom of the synthesizer, from its infancy to its maturity. Electronic sounds that were thought of as novel in the late 1950s would slowly seep their way into mainstream music and film throughout the 1970s and 1980s, thanks to the pioneering efforts of filmmakers and composers who took a chance on them. The imperfect, slightly free-form sounds of early analog synths would soon become precisely quantized with the invention of MIDI and further refined with digital technology. Within the span of only a few decades music in film would change forever. 

As a musician myself, and as the founder of Synth History—a podcast, website, and magazine dedicated to the history and importance of synths—this period fascinates me. The program I’ve assembled in collaboration with the Criterion Channel highlights some of the key films that helped propel the creative use of the synthesizer. These scores have a lot in common, but they also show the extraordinary range of electronic music. Synths can sound like anything: Like yearning and desire, like interdimensional transcendence, like the dark side of Los Angeles, like violence and elegance all wrapped up in one. They can sound like the future, and now even the past.


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